Last year, a million Palestinians fled Rafah, the southernmost city of the Gaza Strip, to escape the weight of Israel’s bombing in its war against Hamas. When the Israeli forces then invaded Rafah itself, they flattened the areas along the border with Egypt, but many districts were largely spared by the worst of war.
This is no longer the case.
The Israeli army has destroyed many Rafah parties since its end of a ceasefire in March after interviews with Hamas collapsed. In early May, a large part of the destruction was already over, Israel announced that it would soon launch an “intensive” escalation of its campaign in Gaza. During the two previous nights, strikes killed dozens of Palestinians in Gaza, Palestinian officials said. On Tuesday, the Israeli army targeted Muhammad Sinwar, a leader in Hamas in Gaza, near a hospital in Khan Younis.
The satellite images analyzed by the New York Times show that the Israeli army has flattened large areas in and around the city of Rafah and has built new military infrastructure in the past two months.
Israeli leaders say that the capture of more territories inside Gaza will pressure Hamas to surrender and release the remaining hostages that the group has organized since it led a fatal attack against Israel on October 7, 2023. The Minister of Defense of Israel promised that Israeli forces “eliminate” the areas and “prevent any threat”.
Israeli security officials have previously declared that the tunnels between Egypt and Gaza have enabled Hamas to obtain arms and other supplies.
In response to a question of Times on Israeli army operations in Rafah, the army said it was part of an effort to guarantee operational control and carry out anti -terrorist operations.
“We will also reproduce the model implemented in Rafah in other regions of the band,” said Effie Defrin, Israeli military spokesperson in a press briefing last week.
Bloc demolition block
Here is what the operation on the field looks like: four excavators can be seen in a video verified by time demolishing a row of buildings in the Shaboura district of Rafah in April. The video, shared for the first time on an Israeli telegram channel, was taken from an armored vehicle.
Satellite imagery shows that hundreds of buildings were destroyed in this district during the month of April, including on the block where the video was filmed.
Earlier this month, the Israeli security firm approved a new plan to call tens of thousands of additional soldiers, to seize and hold a territory in the besieged enclave and to force the Palestinians to the south. But satellite imagery shows the southern areas where buildings are still standing become smaller and smaller.
Another video shows four buildings destroyed in a controlled demolition. The video, downloaded on the Instagram account of an Israeli soldier and shared by the Palestinian journalist Younis Tirawi on his X account, was filmed in northern Rafah, where a large part of the destruction took place. The satellite image shows that the demolition took place in April.
New construction
Israeli forces are not content to clean up the land. They rely on it.
A new road already extends more than three kilometers from the Israeli border through Rafah in agricultural areas. It is protected by beams, trenches and several military outposts.
And other constructions move to a quick clip, according to satellite images.
Several new military outposts, often classified, paved and surrounded by defensive walls, were built in the south of Gaza in the last month. The soldiers also requisitioned buildings to be used as bases, such as a hospital under construction.
Israel calls the road that it built from the Israeli border the “Morag corridor”, which, according to Netanyahu, was intended to cut Rafah from the rest of the enclave. The name is a reference to a Jewish colony that existed in the region until Israel withdraws its soldiers and civilians from Gaza two decades ago.
What the construction could mean in the long term is uncertain. Some Israeli officials agitated Israel to rebuild Jewish colonies in the enclave, but Mr. Netanyahu has rejected the perspective for the moment.
Netanyahu said last week, after a large part of the construction and razor in Rafah was already underway, that Israel was “on the eve of an energetic entry in Gaza”.
